


Five Years of Sitting

by Heronymus



Category: Firefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-05
Updated: 2004-12-05
Packaged: 2019-04-29 07:19:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14467722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heronymus/pseuds/Heronymus
Summary: A different take on Wash's reasons for not liking War Stories.





	Five Years of Sitting

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Firefly’s Glow](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Firefly%27s_Glow), and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Firefly's Glow collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/fireflysglow/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** Joss has a view of Wash's background. Alan Tudyk and I have another. Here's mine.

  
Author's notes: Joss has a view of Wash's background. Alan Tudyk and I have another. Here's mine.  


* * *

Five Years of Sitting

## Five Years of Sitting

Five Years. 

In the history of wars, it was relatively short. 

Five years is a long time to spend in one place. 

One thousand, eight hundred and twenty six days. 

Forty three thousand, eight hundred and twenty four hours. 

Two million, six hundred twenty nine thousand, four hundred and forty minutes. 

One hundred fifty seven million, seven hundred sixty six thousand, four hundred seconds. 

Five years. In the Vargas II POW camp. Because sometimes even the best pilot can't outfly destiny. 

Zoe and Mal, they have all those war stories together. And the truth is, it's not the fact that they have stories together; hell, it's not even the fact that they have stories together that sound cool. 

No, the problem is, they have stories. And my War Stories can't compare with that. 

I was an officer, a pilot anyway, so they treated me pretty well, all things considered. No torture, no horrible war crimes, no terrible stories of abuse or neglect. I mean, I could tell about the time I spent a month making little figures for a shadow puppet play only to have the lightbulb go out ten minutes into the performance. I could tell the story of how we got so cold one winter night that there was frost on the inside of the windows because the heater in the dormitory went out. I could tell the story about how we started a garden to cover for the fact that we were digging a tunnel to escape. 

Except that we had a replacement bulb within five minutes, and the heater was fixed the next morning, and we weren't really digging a tunnel, we were trying to keep busy. 

Five years, mostly of being bored, and feeling guilty about getting off light in the grand scheme of things. 

I understand, from reading the history books, that some of the enlisted POW camps were pretty atrocious. Of course, there actually weren't many camps, since the kill-count for this war was astoundingly high; the weapons developed in the last century or so pretty much gauranteed that if you were on a battlefield, you either lived, or died. The living fled; the dead...didn't. So getting captured was pretty rare. I guess I was one of the lucky ones in that respect. 

Five years of knowing that at the end, I'd go home and face court-martial, at least. Five years of knowing that all that was standing between me and disgrace was the Independent's fighting spirit, a fighting spirit that was contagious if you were around it...but once you weren't, it sort of...drained away. Five years of hoping for one more day, and knowing that I was a coward, because every day I was in here meant more people were dying out there. And still wanting one more day between me and disgrace. 

How did I get there? It was easy, really. I'm a pilot, right? At the time, I thought I was the best pilot in the 'verse. Top of my class in flight school. First in my class in everything, including demerits for being a smartass. But hey, we were pilots; we were supposed to be cocky and smartassed. It's part of the profile, part of the persona. We were fearless, and immortal, and terrifyingly young. Then we went to war. 

It was a milk-run. A fast insert, easy as pie, almost beneath my talents. Take a personnel-lifter, a wallowy little pig of a craft, and run a nape-of-the-earth flight from orbit down to the target landing zone, drop off the platoon stored in the specially-built crate that made up two-thirds of the craft, then beat-feet back to the carrier. The only possible complication was the hot LZ, and I'd aced that sim a dozen times in flight school. 

Everything went fine on the way in. Fast drop through atmo to about three yards off the deck, brushing the treetops on some little moon that was a battlefield and not much noticable otherwise, and weave along a little no-name river to the LZ, about a mile behind the front on the wrong side. A milk run. It was fun; snapping off the tops of trees with the belly of the 'lifter, listening to the troops in the back jump and start and complain with every bang. We came up over a ridge and all of the sudden we were in the thick of it, AA and small arms fire everywhere, and it was a little scary but we were moving fast and no one could touch me or my craft; I was immortal. I was a pilot. 

We were under fire pretty much for the last 90 seconds of the flight, but that was no biggie. Hot LZs were part and parcel of the job, right? Things started to get scary as I came in for the drop, though. We started taking pretty heavy small arms peppering, nothing the armor couldn't handle but it was obviously cover fire until they could bring up something heavier, and I was ready to get gone. So I delivered the cargo: Pull a switch, and the back two-thirds of the 'lifter comes off, opens up like a flower and the platoon deploys ready to fight. I gave them the ten-second heads-up, and then my co-pilot gave them the three second countdown. Three-two-one pull the lever, and suddenly the pig-boat became a butterfly; all engine and no weight to speak of. Had to react fast or I would have bounced straight up into the AA fire that was thick overhead by this point. 

And then things went all to hell. A roller busted through the trees and put a shell in the middle of the crate, which put paid to pretty much the entire platoon, more or less. The gun on the cupola opened up at us, and I flipped the bird around but not before the starboard side of the cockpit got sprayed, and my co-pilot got splattered all over the side of my chair. I could see folk on the ground, struggling to get into position with most of their backup blown away, so I juked to port about a hundred feet, smacked into a tree, and bounced one of the landing pylons off the top of the roller. Bent the gear all to heck, but I took the big gun out of service, and then I hit the recall for the troops. I didn't have a crate to put 'em in, but there was room for seven crew in the back of the 'lifter, and I figured I could sqeeze fourteen into the space...but I doubted there were fourteen left. I took about sixty seconds of light arms fire and I got nine guys, one of them a sergeant, who leaned up and thumped my shoulder. 

"Everyone else is gone. Let's beat it." 

I bounced up to treetop height again, on the exit vector, and my ECM warning went off; someone down there had a shoulder-mounted missile, and had decided to use it on me. And that was the end. 

I had about half a second to react, and I did everything they teach you in flight school: drop countermeasures, jeek in a random direction, and then drop altitude to try and get under the acquisition signal. I just...forgot I was only three yards above the ground. The seeker missed; the ground didn't. 

We plowed in at a bit over ten feet per second. In the grand scheme of things, not so fast, but fast enough to dig the nose in pretty good, and to snap off the starboard stabilizer. It had taken some hits in the LZ, so I guess it was weakened. And that was that. The Alliance troops showed up, the sergeant had us lay down arms, and they pulled us clear of the wreck. My crew chief had bought it in the crash: a stray chunk of something had sheared his head clean off. The separated us out, enlisted on one side, and me, the "officer", on the other. We just sat there, waiting for a transport, and whatever came next. 

And then the sergeant leaned towards me, and he said "Hey, flyboy." And I was figuring I was about to get an earful, since I'd just pretty much killed his entire platoon. And I deserved it. And then he said, "Thanks." 

"For what?" I said. 

"For not ditching us when you could've. I reckon, most of you flyboys just see as as cargo to be dropped. Thanks for remembering we're folk." 

I didn't know what to say to that, so I just nodded, and pretty soon we were carted off. 

I don't know what happened to the sergeant. I ended up in the Vargas II POW camp, officer's division. It was six weeks after the war started. And I spent the next five years waiting. 

I didn't fight in the war. Mal and Zoe fought; I sat. 

I don't have any war stories. And sometimes, that makes me mad.

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title:   **Five Years of Sitting**   
Author:   **Heronymus**   
Details:   **Standalone**  |  **PG**  |  **gen**  |  **7k**  |  **12/05/04**   
Characters:  Wash   
Summary:  A different take on Wash's reasons for not liking War Stories.   
Notes:  Joss has a view of Wash's background. Alan Tudyk and I have another. Here's mine.   
  



End file.
